Why Passing Old Stories To New Generations Matters (Horror Movie Edition)

How do you make old stories exciting to new generations?

What can a YouTube movie critic and a wealth managing attorney teach us about life through the lens of slasher story structures? 

NEW JUST PRESS RECORD - but first, I think I need to explain myself.

I feel like my brain got broken open sometime in high school after discovering the Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey stuff. 

It made me want to get all deep about how The Bible and Gilgamesh and all the monomyths were everywhere. 

But it took me years to start to see how (and why) even more constrained formats could be so… informative. 

I feel like I sensed it in music first. Why a million country songs could still find Hank and Hank Jr. and even Hank III’s creative genius. Why a million cocaine rap songs could still be comic book universes I wanted to inhabit. Why the punk stuff worked. Why Ian MacKaye outgrew hardcore before hardcore arrested itself in a lack of development.

And although I knew I saw it in movies, I don’t think I fully embraced it in the horror genre until I talked it out with CT Reese and Frazer Rice. 

I watched a LOT of horror movies in high school too. I just don’t think I ever got quite this philosophical about it. Better 20(+) years late than never.

Back to where we started:

What can a YouTube movie critic and a wealth managing attorney teach us about life through the lens of slasher story structures? 

YO. 

Sorry for the informality, but

YO. 

This is wild. 

We covered: 

Story structure and the teenage mind,

Creating within constraints without constraints,

Flandersification/cartoonification of characters, 

The language of genres,

Why entertainment requires creating feelings in an audience,

…and I’m just scratching the surface. 

Yes, we are talking about horror movies, but if you create or consume anything, you want to hear this. 

The personal and professional applications of understanding a heavily stylized and personalized genre like horror movies run deep. 

And who knows what lurks in these depths (queue scary music)!

Watch CT Reese and Frazer Rice on Just Press Record (on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel):